How to Add “Hanging Indents” to a Word Document in Windows

This brief tutorial will show you how to create hanging indents in Word Documents via Microsoft Office for Windows (Office 2010).

Hanging indents are required for formatting APA Reference pages and/or adhering to MLA 2009 for Works Cited pages. The example shown below is APA.

Note: the Mac version of this tutorial can be found here.

1. First things first – make sure that you have the Ruler visible in Microsoft Word. To do so, select View from the main menu, and then place a check in the box labeled Ruler.


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2. Now select all of the text you wish to add hanging indents to.


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3. Hover your cursor over the ‘arrows’ in the Ruler until you see the text Hanging Indent.



4. Click and hold down the mouse button while you drag the arrow to the right. This will ‘move’ (indent) each of the lines that appear after the first line in each of your references.


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5. That’s it! You now have hanging indents in your MS Word document.

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